Tag Archives: Jason Recher

Excellent detailed piece on Sarah Palin by journalist Michael Joseph Gross in the October 2010 issue of Vanity Fair …

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Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury

Former Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin speaks at the "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on August 28, 2010.

Even as Sarah Palin’s public voice grows louder, she has become increasingly secretive, walling herself off from old friends and associates, and attempting to enforce silence from those around her. Following the former Alaska governor’s road show, the author delves into the surreal new world Palin now inhabits—a place of fear, anger, and illusion, which has swallowed up the engaging, small-town hockey mom and her family—and the sadness she has left in her wake.

Sarah Palin, feeling unprepared, pulled out of a Univision interview that John McCain wound up doing by himself.

A top adviser on Hispanic issues to John McCain’s presidential campaign said Sunday that a joint interview with McCain and Sarah Palin planned for Univision last fall had to be canceled because Palin was unprepared to discuss Latin America policy.

“She did not feel comfortable speaking about issues regarding Hispanics and Latin America,” GOP consultant Ana Navarro told Univision anchor Jorge Ramos in an interview. “Those are not topics that come up frequently in Alaska. So she asked to cancel the interview and, unfortunately, you were already there.”

There are only so many hours in the day, and we want to help you. So here’s the first in an occasional series rounding up what you need to know about big politics books you want to read, if only you could find the time.

In between election returns, we read “Sarah From Alaska” by Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe, two reporters who covered last year’s presidential race. It’s out now from PublicAffairs Books (with the teasing subtitle, “The Sudden Rise and Brutal Education of a New Conservative Superstar”). We found enough in it to sustain a week of cocktail conversations.

Here are the highlights:

— Getting the news from Fox: Sarah Palin learned from Fox News that she and John McCain wouldn’t win last year’s presidential election. When she heard anchor Brit Hume announce that Barack Obama had won Ohio, “Palin swallowed a mouthful of air. ‘Oh, well, that’s it,’ she said.”

— No concession on the concession: Palin wanted to give a concession speech, but that was nixed by McCain and his aides. It had been written by former Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully, and would have had her say, “when a black citizen prepares to fill the office of Washington and Lincoln, that is a shining moment in our history that can be lost on no one.” And Palin would have offered her own lavish praise for Obama and his “beautiful family,” McCain and the “honor of a lifetime” that he had given her, and a shout-out to a boy with Down syndrome who she had met on the campaign trail. McCain and his staff were adamantly opposed, though the authors offer no real explanation beyond the general friction between the McCain and Palin camps by the end of the campaign.

— The awkward goodbye with McCain: McCain and Palin parted ways that night after she saw him getting into a Chevy Suburban outside the Arizona hotel where the campaign had gathered on election night. The conversation went like this: “‘John? Is that you?’ Palin asked. Cindy [McCain] was already in the car, and the senator had just given a final hug to his press secretary and personal aide, Brooke Buchanan. He spun around. ‘Oh, hey. How are you, Sarah?’ ‘Are you leaving?’ ‘Yup, we’re out of here.’ Palin paused. ‘Okay, well, good night.’ ‘Yes, good night. We’re headed back to the house.’ The now former running mates exchanged final pat-on-the-back hugs and a muffled thank you or two.”

In Sarah From Alaska, two campaign reporters share the behind-the-scenes story of Sarah Palin‘s rise to national stardom and surprising resignation.

On the “Early Show” on CBS, authors Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe said Tuesday there was a “remarkable internal war” at the end of the campaign between Palin and McCain’s teams when the VP candidate was told she could not deliver a concession speech. “Governor Palin tried to create some confusion” so that she would be able to speak, but she ultimately failed. “It really turned into an all-out civil war,” Walshe said. On election night, Palin went back out onstage to take pictures with her family and McCain’s staff was so terrified that she would give a speech after all that they turned out the lights on her.

According to a copy of the book obtained by Huffington Post, when senior McCain aide Carla Eudy heard the news, she immediately called campaign manager Steve Schmidt, who barked, “Take the set down. Unplug it.”

The McCain staff didn’t believe Palin’s claim that she just wanted to take pictures with her family on stage – to one aide, it sounded like a “dubious cover story.”